Immortal X-Men #18

The White Hot Room:
Mother Righteous has abducted the catatonic Jean Grey and follows her, as Jean leads her through the endless desert. “Once upon a time…,” “happily ever after…” Mother Righteous thinks. What does it mean? Once there was a time when things happened and then that time ended, entering a state of perpetual unending bliss. The full-stop end of the story. She plans to live in that full stop. They call it Dominion. She just calls it her happy ending.

Elsewhere in the White Hot Room, in Atlantic Krakoa, Exodus hovers over what is left, after Krakoa lashed out at them. Holding the bleeding Destiny in her arms, Hope Summers calls the healer Elixir to help All of that was caused by Mother Righteous. She gathered their “thank yous,” which allow her to manipulate the thanker. In this case, she burned up all of the Krakoan ‘thank yous’ to make Krakoa angry, to ensure her getaway after stabbing Destiny and kidnapping Jean.

Recovered Destiny screams they are in the White Hot Room. The other are not impressed at the revelation, having figured that out themselves recently. Destiny asks if Mother Righteous is still there and Exodus informs her that she left with Jean. Newly energized, Destiny drags Hope up, claiming they still have a chance. She will explain on the way. Have her powers returned? Exodus asks skeptically. If not, what use is she? She retorts, she is the only one who can do anything.

Still on her way, Mother Righteous muses that she had a tiny debt from everyone on Krakoa. She used half of them to play with the mutants’ connection to the gates, when they were forced to walk through them by Orchis. She made the mutants all want to go to the place mutants are kind of connected to. The White Hot Room, where she wanted to go but couldn’t, not being a mutant. So, she took another chunk of those ‘thank yous’ and created a homunculus of herself, imbued with a tiny fraction of their mutant powers. The homunculus now acts as an extension of her in the White Hot Room, while the real Mother Righteous sits on her hands playing puppet master.

Jean has led her to a cave. Nice and Jungian, Mother Righteous figures. Now they are getting somewhere.

Meanwhile, with Mr. Sinister’s red diamond transport, Xavier has reached Muir Isle, where Sinister’s secret lab is hidden. Why did he hide his Moira engines here? he demands of the aspect of Sinister in his mind.

Besides comedy? Sinister asks. It’s the place where Moria has been most active. As such it is a stabilizing place for the Moira clones. A multidimensional pivot. She was a weird cookie, their Moira. Still is.

Climbing up the cliffs, Xavier wonders if she “still is.” Is that awful robotic revenant really her? Wrong person to ask, Sinister shrugs, as he has remade himself over and over. Is he still himself? He has no idea. Xavier has seen inside; he is a photocopy, a loser, nothing. There is no “I” in the Ship of Theseus, except in the ship bit. Whoever wins the Dominion game is the real one, not him.

They survey the complex, which is guarded by Orchis special guards. Xavier uses his telepathy to make himself invisible to them. The Sinister in him has brought Jeffries gas, whose gift will momentarily take out any machines.

Xavier makes his way down to Sinister’s lab, though he questions if there will be anything left of use. Sinister has his own hidden backups, which should include the data from the Sinister timeline. Let’s see what secrets they can rustle up.

The White Hot Room:
Mother Righteous sums her character up as lazy. She thinks about how much time and work it took for Sinister to reach his goal in the Sinister timeline. Magic is about the easy way. She decided that magic alone isn’t the way, because, if magic was all that powerful, it would already rule the world. Sinister is a #*%& and wrong in so many ways, but he has a point: mutants are a great new cheat.

She and Jean exit the cave and walk up the construction girders of a large building.

She figures it’s her twist on the old Arthur C. Clarke thing: any sufficiently advanced mutation is indistinguishable from magic.

Elsewhere, Exodus flies himself, Hope and Destiny following Mother Righteous. Destiny urges them to move faster. Exodus demands answers. Succinctly, Destiny summarizes that there is a Dominion outside time and space, it has haunted the century.

She has acted against it without acting against it. She couldn’t talk about it, because it can always be watching and, any time she tried, things went poorly. But now they are outside time and space, so she can tell them everything.

They enter the cave. She urges them on. Perhaps they can still prevent this from happening.

Muir Isle:
Under the guidance of the Sinister, ghost Xavier restores the lab’s computer and bristles at Sinister’s patronizing praise. Xavier reminds him that he is a genius and did build the first Cerebro, plus whatever technical skills he needs, he borrows. He asks what, if that Dominion exists, can they do. Sinister muses, what can it do? It exists outside time and space. That has great power, but also significant limitations. It is reliant on bringing itself into being, so it can’t change causality, however it can alter things behind the scenes. It can change meaning, it can reveal truths. They should assume all of reality is a minefield in ways they can’t comprehend. Most of all, it can be watching any time.

Xavier points out that, since Sinister is in Xavier’s head, the Dominion sees only Xavier and won’t meddle. How does he know it hasn’t come into full power yet. He mainly thinks, as “we are still breathing,” is the wry response. He thinks when it comes into being, it needs to worry a lot less about causality.

Xavier activates the computer. Sinister continues, bar the fact that it would likely be more free to act, he also suspects the winner would be gloating more. It’s what he would do. Stasis or Orbis or whoever the other one is, are still on their way to dominionhood. Xavier corrects him, it’s not Stasis or Orbis. Sinister’s machine includes data from the timelines when they tried. They both already failed.

The White Hot Room:
Mother Righteous muses that Legion was her first option, with his all-powerful noggin.

Jean leads her across the steel girders of the construction. The construction worker who may or may not be Death is working on another part and ignores them.

But her attempt to get Legion went pear-shaped and he disappeared. He still owes her, so if he ever shows his face again…. From Dr. Stasis, she learned that Orchis was going to kill Jean. Mother Righteous spent the better part of 1,000 years prodding a Phoenix egg in the Red Diamond future. Jean is connected to the White Hot Room, which is basically the Phoenix. Any time she’s dead, she is there. She is of the Phoenix in a real unbreakable way. She guides it and it guides her in a circle without beginning or end. It’s some very gnomic stuff. And Mother Righteous is going to use her as a pot of ink, because she is a total cow.

They reach the top of the construction and there is white nothingness.

Muir Isle:
Studying Sinister’s files, Xavier explains that Stasis and Orbis Stellaris’ attempts at Dominionhood are clearly labeled. Moira IV.8 and II.4. Each reached out for Dominionhood, were consumed, and then Sinister reset the timeline. Xavier is disgusted at himself for using such a term to lessen the monstrosity. Peevishly, Sinister insists that he doesn’t remember any of that. He looks at the screens but can’t see it. He accuses Xavier or messing with him. He’s not, Xavier replies, but fears someone else has been. There are three attempts at Dominionhood. Sinister’s in the empire of the red diamond, Stellaris with a mysterium / M’kraantite crystal construct and a timeline, where Stasis did something terrible to the sun. No fourth attempt.

Sinister thinks, then asks if there are details of the fourth Sinister. There are, Xavier replies. He discovered all four identities in many timelines. The fourth is Mother Righteous. Studying her image, it strikes Xavier for the first time that she has always been wearing a mask. Strange he didn’t think of that before. Story magic, Sinister explains. Shipwrecked girl puts on a disguise and all of a sudden you have a strangely charming manservant? Happens all the time. You can say a lot about experimentation on mutant babies, but he won’t put a Twelfth Night whammy on people, he jokes.

Xavier thinks how she has been alongside them, advising them, and curses. They have to find her. Sinister agrees. She is the one who is going to do it. They have to defy causality and stop her! What the hell is that woman up to?

What she is up to is sacrificing Jean in the center of the Hot White Room and use her connection to the infinite power of the Phoenix to make herself a Dominion, though she is not sure whether or not this will kill the Phoenix. It will certainly hurt it.

Somewhat behind her, Exodus floats the three of them up the building construction and they can see Mother Righteous preparing.

Mother Righteous sends all her gathered favors and spells as storybook monsters at them to slow them down, though she knows by the rule of stories it’ll go down to the last second of the clock.

Hope and Exodus fight the storybook creatures. They cut out a path to allow Exodus to telekinetically push Destiny toward Mother Righteous. However, she has taken her dagger and stabs Jean in the chest.

She begins writing letters of blood in the white nothingness. Reaching her, Destiny shouts at her to stop, but she has already written her spell with Jean’s blood and looks up triumphantly:

Once upon a time there was a simple girl from Essex. She became a Dominion. She lived happily ever after.

The flesh becomes word and Mother Righteous ascends.

Suddenly, the process stops, as in all the whiteness she sees a corner, as if there is another sheet of paper hiding beneath the nothingness. She lifts the corner and under it sees letters written in flame:

However, his mistress of stories should have known, there’s aways a twist.
Look behind you.

Mother Righteous looks up to see something that horrifies her. No, she protests weakly, then explodes.

And a moment later, she is back where she was before the ascension, with the others who have beaten the storybook creatures. Exodus cradles Jean. No, it’s her, Mother Righteous babbles helplessly. It should have been her… but it’s him!

Hearing her scream, Destiny becomes aware Mother Righteous is back and asks Hope to lead her to her side. Then she kicks her in the face. That’s what she was trying to tell her, now Mother Righteous has doomed them all!

Once upon a time, someone thinks. A cliché of children’s fiction. Stories are just something that can be eaten by an AI to make it more powerful. The only good story is a story that has been entirely consumed and exploited. Once a dying man had a problem. How could he defeat the machine brains? He conceived a plan. He created four variations of himself and sent them into the world to take what was there. Each would explore a route to become what the machines strove for. The four variations were leeches, colonizing and appropriating all of creation and life’s data. When they succeeded, fail-safes engaged and all they had done was gathered and fed into a central model. Because the real answer? What can defeat the machine brains? Nothing. All you can do is create the apex AI first.

In a hidden lab in Essex House, three buttons, each with a card suit symbol haven been glowing. The fourth – the heart – begins to glow as well, and then so does the larger button with the crown symbol they all surround.

I was Nathaniel Essex.
I am long dead.
I am a ghost. A ghost in the machine.
You may call me Enigma.
You were told you had new gods.
You do.
I am he.
I can see all of you.
Every part of you will become part of me.